


the epic highs and lows of high school football

by thefigureinthecorner



Series: tbs bad things happen bingo [2]
Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Injuries, but it’s an OC not Caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-27 12:15:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21118634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefigureinthecorner/pseuds/thefigureinthecorner
Summary: And he can see Caleb shaking, see the fear building again, and then he feels guilty because he can’t calm himself down. He can’t be that anchor for Caleb, because he’s terrified.(prompt: sports injury)





	the epic highs and lows of high school football

Adam watches as one of the players on his school’s team goes down  _ hard  _ and immediately begins searching frantically for the white 8 on Caleb’s jersey on the field. The game moves so fast sometimes that as much as Adam would love to stare at the way Caleb seems to move so effortlessly on the field, he can’t always keep track of his boyfriend in all the chaos. This is just one of those times. So much had been happening, and Adam lost sight of Caleb, and now someone was hurt and Adam couldn’t tell  _ who. _

He breathes a sigh of relief when he notices Caleb in the swath of football players taking a knee on the sideline.

The kneeling is something that had caught him by surprise at the first game he went to where someone had gotten hurt. Caleb explained it to him later; it serves a few purposes. The first is to respect the fact that a player has been injured, whether they’re your teammate or not. The second, to keep everyone out of the way of the people checking on the person who was hurt. The third reason was to signal to the stands to be quiet, so that they would hopefully also be respectful to the player who’d been injured. There were still the annoying few who kept on talking and laughing, but for the most part, the tradition did its job. The commotion in the marching band and student sections ground to a halt, families in the stands shushed their kids and told them to sit down, and the whole stadium lulled down to little more than hush whispers of “what’s going on?” and “do you think he’s okay?”

It’s one of the few things Adam likes about the sport, the level of respect that everyone tries to show on the field.

It’s also one of the most terrifying things.

The silence makes everyone more tense as they wait with bated breath to make sure the guy’s alright; the medics they have on standby run to his side and begin checking him over.

A minute passes.

He doesn’t get up.

Two minutes go by.

Five.

The tension in the crowd keeps growing and the murmuring of worried friends and teachers and parents and siblings grows. Most of the injuries are minor, they don’t take this long, they  _ shouldn’t  _ take this long.

Caleb is shaking.

Adam tried to calm himself down, be an anchor for Caleb in the sea of worried onlookers. It seems to work, vaguely, but Caleb is still trembling and even from his vantage point far back in the stands Adam can see it, can see the fear building in Caleb, and he knows it’s bad.

After another minute passes the field staff begin gesturing people off the field and the murmuring in the crowd intensifies even more. It’s as Adam is wondering why they’re clearing so much space that he sees the ambulance roll in and the gravity of the situation falls on everyone.

This isn’t an injury that he’s going to bounce back from. This is worse.

More people on the field, more people checking the guy’s mobility and asking him questions and there’s a stretcher and oh god, is that a fucking  _ backboard?  _ Aren’t those for, like, broken spines and necks and shit?

Adam isn’t the only one who feels a stab of fear at seeing that, he realizes, because Caleb  _ flinches  _ at the sudden spike in adrenaline that the whole crowd feels at once and Adam tries to push his fear back down again and calm down enough to just be  _ there  _ for Caleb.

But it’s not helping this time. Not because of the fear, not entirely, but every time someone moves the guy who got hurt, Caleb keeps flinching and Adam realizes—

Caleb can feel that.

Caleb can feel his pain.

It isn’t until the ambulance drives off, the two teams stand back up, and the announcer wishes player 47, Andrew Harrison, a speedy recovery, and the crowd applauds him out in support, that Caleb finally relaxes a bit.

Adam rushes to find him the second the game is over.

Getting into the locker room after games is an absolute nightmare, and they usually stink to high heaven anyway, so he waits outside and lets Caleb sag against him when he finally emerges, showered and worn-down and ready to just go  _ home. _

They’re silent until they get to Adam’s car, not wanting anyone in the crowd to overhear them, but once they’re away from prying ears the silence breaks.

“You okay?” Adam doesn’t start the car right away, just lets Caleb breathe for a moment now that he’s not surrounded by people.

Caleb slumps in his seat.

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m… I’ll be fine.”

“You sure?”

Caleb doesn’t speak for a long time, like he’s hoping Adam will let it go, but eventually he caves. “He was just… in a lot of pain. I could feel it. You know I don’t get, like, specific pain, so like, I didn’t feel exactly how he was feeling, but it was just. Sharp, I guess? It fucking hurt. Every time they moved him I could feel it hurt more.”

Adam winces. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d figured. You were kinda flinching every time they jostled him.” He pauses. “What even happened to him? I mean, they had one of those fucking backboards, aren’t those for like spine injuries or whatever?”

“No, no, it wasn’t anything like that, thank  _ fuck.  _ Nah, he just, like, completely shattered his leg. He’s gonna need some serious surgery and they got the backboard because they couldn’t move him at all without, like, jostling it and making things worse, I guess? I dunno, it all sounded real bad when coach was explaining it after, but it sounds like he’ll recover at least.” The small tremors still taking over Caleb’s hands die down as he speaks, and he takes a couple deep breaths. “Thank you. For, uh, being calm in the stands. I could tell you were trying and it helped a lot, actually.”

Adam smiles. “Hey, what else do you keep me around for?”

“Dork.”

“Meathead. Alright, let’s get you home, you look like you need to sleep for like a week.”

“Ugh, god, I wish.”

——

So when the same thing happens again next week— the kneeling, the stadium-wide tense hush, the medics, the panic, and Adam doesn’t see the familiar 8 in the crowd of people watching on the field, he  _ worries. _

He doesn’t want to look, doesn’t want to see if the number on the jersey of the person lying there is an 8, but he knows. He knows that if he can’t see Caleb anywhere else, then that’s him, lying still on the shitty pebble-y turf that gets into every single crevasse of everyone’s shoes. That’s him being checked over by medics. That’s him having his knee moved around to check its mobility, that’s him being checked for a concussion, that’s him  _ lying there and not moving. _

And he can see Caleb shaking, see the fear building again, and then he feels guilty because he can’t calm himself down. He can’t be that anchor for Caleb, because he’s terrified. Terrified that this is going to be like Andrew last week, with the ambulance and the tension and the backboard and the fear.

It’s not.

It’s  _ not. _

Caleb stands back up, with some support, and half-walks, half-hops back to the sidelines to sit on the bench. The players stand up, the stadium claps to cheer him on, the game moves on. The announcer gives Caleb’s number and name and wishes him well, as always, and the world feels like it’s started turning again.

Adam could cry, he’s so relieved.

He doesn’t. Or, well, he holds it together until the end of the game, anyway. Holds it together until he rushes to Caleb after the game for the second week in a row to check on him. Holds it together as he tells Caleb how absolutely  _ terrified  _ he’d been, how after last week he hadn’t known what to  _ expect _ , and oh god what if Caleb had been another Andrew, and as Caleb runs a hand over his curls and holds him to his chest even as he’s resting his iced-up knee on a bench outside the locker room like he’s not the one who just got hurt, like Adam’s the one he should be focusing on and not himself. Somehow, Adam holds it together through all that.

He holds it together on the drive home, though Caleb definitely notices something’s still off despite Caleb trying to constantly assure him that he’s fine. Holds it together as his parents ask how his evening went and he shares as few details as possible, not wanting them to worry about him  _ or  _ ask him a ton of questions about Caleb.

And if, the second he gets to his room, he breaks down sobbing at the thought of Caleb having to go through everything that Andrew went through, well.

Nobody has to know about that.

**Author's Note:**

> The kneeling thing was a thing my high school football team (and marching band!) did, and I almost didn’t include it because it’s apparently not that common, but I chose to include it anyway because like Adam, it’s one of the few things I liked about the games.
> 
> Anyway I wrote this at like 2am in one sitting and didn’t proofread anything so if it’s good, that’s a miracle, and if it’s not, that’s why
> 
> Also, if any of this seems weirdly specific? Yeah that’s cause it is


End file.
